About to go to kickboxing... Looking like this!

!

At least four people have recognized my costume. Yes. :)

Thank goodness!

Thank goodness for several things. Some of these things are:

1) That I heard my alarm go off this morning even though the volume on my phone was down very low. Nothing like starting out a day by oversleeping, and this day is so full, that wouldn't have been an option today! So, yay for good ears. I guess my tendency to listen to music way too loud on my iPod while working out hasn't killed my hearing yet. Awesome!

2) Today is Halloween! That means my friends and I will be dressing up - I've never dressed up while at college. However, today, the ideas are too good to pass up. I will be Tim Minchin and if you are reading this blog and have somehow managed to avoid learning who he is, please go check this out, or this! I will look that awesome. And I'm going to carry around post-it notes with his name and a song of his to search on youtube, and I'll give those post-its to people who ask me who I'm supposed to be...

3) I'm going to Meadville this weekend! I've never done such a spontaneous or brief trip home, and I'm really excited to be doing it now. :)


4)Yesterday was beautiful.

 

5) Managed 10k (6.2 ish miles) yesterday - I've been getting really bad stitches in my side at around 4 miles lately and haven't been able to keep going, but yesterday, - perfect! 10k in 57 ish minutes. :) Woohoo!

Scent Memory

Last winter, it got cold in Germany. There were a few wintry nights with temperature levels that made it into the news back home in Pennsylvania.  It was during the end of my first semester, after Christmas, and the skin on my hands kept cracking in the cold. To try and keep the dryness and pain at bay, I put lotion on my hands each morning before I went out, and once again when I returned in the evening. I used one particular kind of cream, and didn’t think much of it at the time.

This morning, my hands were a bit dry. I rummaged through my bathroom bag hanging on the towel bar in my room and found a tiny container of the same lotion I had used last winter. Rushing out the door with my backpack on one shoulder, keys and water bottle in the other hand, I rubbed some of the lotion on my hands and walked swiftly to class.

I took my seat at one of the tables arranged in a rectangle, all seats facing in. We started discussing the welfare system in the US and the policies put in place in 1996, and as the lecture got started, I put my elbows on the table in front of me and laced my fingers together, rested my chin against them.

The smell of the lotion reached my nose. With my eyes open, I saw the classroom swim away. I saw crosswalks and pigeons and the train station sliding out of view from the bus window.  My head was leaned against my hands which were folded on top of my backpack. I could smell the instant coffee from tiny mugs in the Uni Mensa (cafeteria) and see the sidewalk sparkle under a thin sheet of ice in front of the math building.

As I looked down at my notebook in the classroom, I could see past the desk to the tips of the boots I had stolen from Claudia growing darker and darker grey from the slush at the bus stop.  When I pushed my glasses up my nose as I took notes on the welfare system, I remembered how my glasses didn’t fog up with the heat when I walked into the stairwell leading to our apartment since there was no heat in the halls, but that they did fog up when I opened the door into our kitchen.

For some reason, I feel very absent from here today. True, this scent memory is a big part of it, but I also think I go through cycles of living here. At first, it’s a vacation – exciting and new. Then it becomes every day life. And now – today is one of the days that doesn’t make sense to me. The friends I spoke with and experiences I had in Mainz are still so close to my heart. The me that I am now, that me which changes every year bit by bit, is more comfortable in an apartment than in a dorm room, perhaps more comfortable in Germany than California. 

The point is that today, my mind was far enough away from here that it only took a small breath of the scent of the perfume to send me back. And it made me wonder if in five years, when I smell eucalyptus somewhere, I will remember today and my time here just as strongly.

Aha-Moment

Hey!

I'm sitting with the last bit of a large mug of coffee and my algebra book in front of me, getting ready for my exam tomorrow. I just had a lovely "aha-moment" - reading something that I know to be true but never quite grasped why, and all of a sudden, without thinking about it further, I knew exactly why it was true. I think math has really taught me what actual understanding feels like. I know how I feel when I'm only "getting" something enough to be able to use it in a proof, for example, but it's not tangible to me yet. I don't have a picture of it in my head, if that makes sense. When I really do understand a concept or a statement, though, it appears in my head whenever I read it. There's no question about whether that statement is true or what that abstract object is really like - I have the blueprint of it in my head and it so clearly couldn't be, couldn't exist any other way - it simply has to be true. And it feels great!

However, knowing what real understanding feels like, I also know when I don't understand something fully, and then I can't help but be impatient. That's the thing about math sometimes. Sometimes, you could read the definition fifty times in a hour and still not "get" it. Sometimes, you just have to wait. Then, in the shower, during your second cup of coffee, while you're walking the dog - there it is! It appears in your head, fully formed, just like the simplest thing in the world. And you think, "well, brain, if it was so damn simple, why didn't you just let me understand it before!?!"  Humbling, I suppose. :)

I hope I have a few more of those moments during studying today. That would make me feel good about tomorrow.

In other news, it's still kind of rainy in Oakland and I can't find my raincoat. Unfortunate, but we persevere! :)

---

It got sunny at the end of the day - thought I'd share a bit with you:

I love the rain.

Hey.

So, back from that glorious three-day weekend (three and a half, since I skipped my Thursday night class to go to Santa Cruz). I learned some things this weekend - like, for example, the important thing to do is to walk down the coast to the lighthouse on West Cliff Drive with my grandfather, not necessarily to get a headstart on studying for the Algebra exam coming up. It's okay that I didn't go for a run while I was there, because instead, I got to read some of that book that I've been wanting to read for weeks. It's alright that I didn't start research for my film paper because instead, I picked vegetables from the garden and made a salad, cooked with my dad, and bought a small birthday gift for a friend.

I think I've been going crazy lately because I feel like "real life" is out of my reach. I've been holed up in a cocoon of studying in a self-perpetuating way. Every second has to be used for something, I can't just "do nothing" - and "nothing" is anything that isn't for a class. So, it was refreshing and I think a lifeline to my inner person who is more than just a student to be in Santa Cruz and actually live a little. It was a fantastic weekend.

I'm gonna try to balance that stuff more in the upcoming weeks. Also, - the semester is more than half over. What? How did that happen?

I have to run now, but I wanted to clue you in. I'm sure I'll write again soon. Greetings from beautiful, rainy Oakland. I love rain. It always helps me feel in the moment.

What have I actually been learning?

Hello, all. Right now, I want to give you a quick spin through some of the things I've been learning about in my liberal arts education right now. It will be quick because I am exhausted and each ticking of the clock takes me closer to my alarm going off in the morning, but I miss this, so here I go!

1. From Algebra: don't panic. I'm just going to explain one elementary concept. Please understand that what we are actually doing in class involves a lot more than this (and I'm convinced that some of it could be explained to non-math people, but I'm not sure if the one direction, me writing --> you reading format of this blog would be adequate to explain the more layered concepts), but this is an idea that I only heard about for the first time in this class, and I thought it was quite interesting. 

You might recall from elementary school that certain numbers (certain integers, actually - integers are all the whole numbers, negative and positive, including zero) have the property of being prime. That means that those certain numbers have only 1 and themselves as factors (factors being things you multiply together to get that number).  I'm sure most people know the first few prime numbers: 1, 2 (weird, huh? the only even prime number... :D ), 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 23... etc, etc. There are lots of interesting facts about primes. First of all, they seem to be distributed in a rather arbitrary way throughout the integers - 7 and 11 are further away from each other than 11 and 13, but then then 13 is farther away from 17 than that, etc. Several branches of mathematics deal with the properties of prime numbers, looking at them from different ways and in great detail. You may have also learned in school that every integer can be written as a product of prime numbers - called a number's prime factorization. One way to look at this is as the prime numbers as the letters of the alphabet, and the whole set of all integers (from negative infinity to positive infinity) as all the words we can form with those letters. In this sense, the primes are the building blocks of the integers. Atoms. Cool, right?

The other neat thing about primes is that I think they are a fantastic medium through which to explain one basic structure of a proof. You're about to prove something. Like, PROVE something, in the mathematical sense. Are you ready? It's gonna feel awesome.

Let's prove that there are an infinite number of prime numbers.
---- hold on a sec. Think about what that means. It's always good to understand what you're proving before you try to prove it. So, we want to show that there's an infinite number of prime numbers - that means that the further out you go on the number line, if you will, you'll always find another prime number - and another after that, another after that. There is no positive integer so big that a prime number can't be found that's bigger than it.

So, we've understood the question. Now we can prove it. Let's assume for the sake of contradiction (you're learning awesome math language now) that there only finitely many prime numbers. Let's say there's n of them. (Sneaky math talk, using a letter to represent a number. It's not fancy, it's just notation, okay? Don't get intimidated by little ol' n.) Since each of those numbers is prime, but I don't know individually what each of them are, I'm just going to call them p1, p2, p3,...., pn. Now I have a group of n (a number n) prime numbers. With me so far?

I'm also assuming that THAT'S IT. There's no prime number bigger than pn, the last prime number. But hold on a second.

What if I took the product of all of those little p's -- p1*p2*p3*.....*pn?
If I multiply them all together, I get some big number - some big number that's divisible by p1, p2, p3 --- by all of the p's, since they are all in that product. So you know what I'll do to that product? I'll ADD ONE TO IT.

So, we have (p1*p2*p3*.....*pn)+1.  And you know what? That thing I just wrote? That number is prime. Its only factors are 1 and itself, since I used up all of the rest of the primes in the product.

--> there are an infinite number of prime numbers. You give me a finite number of them, I can find you the NEXT one. And I can do that no matter how big the finite number you give me is. QED.

Doesn't that feel awesome?

Okay, but that's not the concept I wanted to share with you. No, with all that as sort of background information, I want you to think about something else: say you have two numbers like 7 and 12.  Yes, 7 is prime, 12 is not. If we look at each of those numbers, we notice that they don't have any factors in common other than 1. And we have a name for numbers like that. We call them relatively prime. Just think of all the fantastic things we can learn about them! :)

----

2. I must say, 1 ended up being quite a lot longer than I'd planned! I was just having too much fun. :) Okay, so besides numbers and their properties, what have I been thinking about? In my RSS course, I have been learning about the idea of dependency and the welfare state - the idea that welfare actually encompasses any redistribution of state wealth (collected through taxes) through resources for citizens. However, we don't think of all welfare the same way. In fact, a lot of welfare programs aren't associated with the hot-button word "welfare" at all. We don't consider Social Security to be a "government hand-out", just for one small example. There's something quite odd in that system. Welfare, in the minds of most people, goes to single mothers and lazy people who don't get off their asses to work. Is this a correct thing to think? No. Is it my automatic to the word 'welfare'? Yes, unfortunately. That just goes to show part of a recurring theme in my class that the rhetoric, the vocabulary we use to discuss a subject greatly influences our understanding of the topic itself.
(If I had more time, I could tell you so much more! I have a long weekend coming up - maybe I will then!)

3.  I'll combine my two film-related classes. In music, we have discussed recently the very huge change around the 50s and 60s in cinema when the film genres and film industry itself had become established enough that films could reference other films. We see this in the form of parodies all the time. We know film and film music conventions so well that it doesn't even seem so important to talk about it, but  it is! Why is it that we laugh when we see someone sitting at a table eating a bowl of spaghetti with music so dramatic it could have played in Jaws? Because we know that type of music is designed for a film like Jaws, not for a film about someone eating noodles. That transition took a while, and the results are really fascinating once you look for them.

In my other film course, we have recently shifted from studying the genre of Formalism in film to Realism. Formalism encompasses about 80% of the films that are made worldwide. Formalism is about entertainment, for the most part. It's about the narrative, it's about providing a conclusion at the end of the narrative that feels like a conclusion - whether it's happy or not. Blockbuster films are formalist, almost 100% of the time. In these films, so much emphasis is placed on the technical aspect of it that we end up having what is called invisible editing, among other things - technique that is so clean, sound design, music, acting, lighting, cinematography - everything done so seamlessly that we don't notice it at all in our willing suspension of disbelief in the theater. We only see the narrative. And it delivers what we want - plot, plot, satisfying conclusion. Fun, entertaining movies. (Batman, Harry Potter, Casablanca, Psycho, etc.)

Realism, however, refers to films that are a bit more ambiguous. Most of the time, there are no noble characters in realist films - no innocent ones either. Everyone is flawed. These movies examine the human condition and what we are apt to do under less than perfect circumstances. On a strictly technical level, one difference between formalism and realism can be seen in the fact that there are very few close-up shots in realism films. In formalism, we quite often get shots that are so close, we have no doubt about what in the scene we are supposed to be focusing on. The editing effectively tells us what is important. This isn't the case in realism. In realism, we see the whole shot - the whole room with characters in it, or the whole house, road, tent - whatever it may be. The camera holds itself back - the viewer is told "You make your own decision. What's going on here? Why? Is it right or wrong? Is there even a right or wrong?" Realism films are quite often more about character study than about the furthering of a plot. (City Lights, Memento, Grapes of Wrath, The Master, etc.)

---

Whew! I got caught up in writing. I need to sleep! I hope you found that at least a little interesting. :) I'll write again soon.

Video!

Hey! I put together some clips from our adventure on Saturday and uploaded it to YouTube - you can check it out here. I hope you enjoy it! It felt good to do some video editing again. :)

San Francisco Day!

So, yesterday, I didn't open a single book, read a singe article, or prove a single proposition. No, it was a homework free day. Erin and I went to San Francisco for the day. It was partially because I found my wardrobe woefully lacking in appropriate winter-wear (i.e. long sleeved shirts and a sweater) and Erin had a few things to pick up. So, we ate breakfast together in my room and then headed into The City, as it's referred to around here.

In the Mall, giving our tired feet a rest...

A lovely San Fran street - the hill was much more dramatic in real life than it looks here.

In case we'd forgotten we were in America.

A fantastic jacket that, don't worry, I did NOT purchase. But the spikes are quite becoming, don't you think?

Then I turned into Humphrey Bogart for a bit.

And finally, a scene outside the restaurant where we'd had dinner with friends of Erin's parents - the nighttime café life made me think once again about how much I miss Mainz.

All in all, quite a lovely day. There will be more soon - I just have to organize it all technologically.

Also, big news: except for one letter of recommendation, my Fulbright application is finished! :)

Fall outside the Music Building

Before it all begins...

My day is planned out to the hour, and that plan starts in about 23 minutes, so before that train starts a-rollin', I wanted to tell you some quick things that I have found fascinating in the last 24 hours.

First of all, in my reading for Film Music, I learned a bit about silence in film. We all know that it's one of the big faux-pas in film to have an actor look directly at the camera. It's cheesy, looks weird, etc, etc. Lots of problems. That we know even as an audience member. What we don't know is that even when there is silence in a film, it isn't silence. There is a very low level of white noise, always (in popular films). Without that "protection of this sound blanket" (Figgis, page 2 of Silence), everything becomes so harsh. We feel as an audience member as if the floor has dropped out beneath us and suddenly, we're faced with actual silence. I feel like some of us may have experienced that more in live theater - that moment when you are jolted out of your willful suspension of disbelief and realize that you're sitting with a bunch of strangers in the dark watching other strangers on a stage. The walls come down when there is no sound and we all suddenly remember reality.

Secondly, I have been reading Black Swan Green lately, a book given to me by my grandmother and written by David Mitchell. Last night, I came across some things I wanted to share here. First of all, there was a scene in which a young boy was chased by some dogs (dobermans) since their owner thought the boy was stuck up given where he had grown up.

"The dog man despised me for not being born here. He despised me for living down Kingfisher Meadows. That's a hate you can't argue with. No more than you can argue with mad Dobermans."

(p. 72)

That made me think of my RSS course, about how I don't mind hearing opinions opposed to mine. It's the blind dismissal of other points of view that bothers me - precisely what Mitchell stated above, that it's something (in many cases hatred in that class) that "you can't argue with".  Very hard to deal with.

The last thing I wanted to say was inspired not only by passages in the book but also by clips that I have watched in both of my film-related classes this week. I feel like everywhere I look, I see paths, roads, trees and greenery, people walking or driving or hiking - just being out there. I want to go walking down paths I haven't seen before - walk with some food in a bag and spend the day without reading an article, book, or internet page - without typing anything or turning in homework. Next Friday (the 19th) is our mid-semester break. Yes, only one day. Pathetic. On the other hand, mid-semester. YIKES!  Anyway, on that weekend, I will be in Santa Cruz and I can't wait to do some serious walking. This morning on my run I discovered two corners of the campus that I hadn't seen before - something that surprises me after my years here, but makes me happy nonetheless. I do get to live on a beautiful campus, and I'm quite grateful for that.  If I can invent something that helps a camera move more smoothly while the camera person walks or rides a bike, I will give you some video proof of this campus' beauty. (I realize something has been invented for just that, but I'm not working on a Hollywood budget, here. :)  )

Prospies Abound

So, our campus is covered with prospective students today - Prospies, we call them. I remember during my various college visits at the end of high school that it was odd to be called a Prospie for the first time - still, at one college (Swarthmore) they referred to us as "Specks". I prefer Prospie!

The point is, they are all around campus today - roaming in groups that are lead by a Mills student carrying a spotted balloon, just so they don't get lost. A few came to my class this morning - pretty intense! Discussion of why state immigration policy is sexualized and racialized and has been so since the 1800s... but they did great! One student even joined in the conversation with a relevant comment, something that us students who have actually done the required reading can't always do.

It's also a gorgeous day. I realized yesterday when I was filling in an application form and needed to write down the years that I "attended" Mills that I will never see the seasons change on this campus again. I said this to Erin, who promptly threw a pillow at me and told me to stop saying such depressing things. Point is, today and yesterday the closing of the Mills time has been quite obvious to me. It's amazing how connected to this place I feel now. It really has treated me well as a student.

Meanwhile, the work doesn't stop. I'm going to head over to the math building and do some reviewing before class. Tonight, Erin and I will celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving by getting the traditional Thanksgiving Crepe in Berkeley (our name for a delicious crepe with turkey, cheese, and cranberry sauce). I'm looking forward to it!

Calvin and Hobbes - flown in from Germany, thanks to C. :)

A great sign down on campus...

The Math Majors made cookies on Friday night - that's right. Star Trek shapes.

Much happier morning!

So, I'm in the mood today where I can't stop dancing to whatever music is playing on my computer. :)
I started the day quite early so that at 8:30, someone from my Film Music class could come over and we could watch a movie together whose music we need to analyze for class. (Shutter Island was the film, incidentally)  Erin came over, too, and we had tea and kept the mood jovial so we didn't get too scared by the creepy movie. It turned out to be a lovely way to start the day!

Yes, I still have a ton to do, but right now, I feel good. Erin and I jammed and played songs on my guitar last night and had a great time, I had a good night's sleep and took the time to actually read some of a book before bed -- all good stuff. Now it's time to go and get some lunch!

Suddenly Saturday Again

Wow.  This has been a serious week.

On top of learning that I was still a candidate for the Fulbright program and doing all the subsequent work for that, the students in Real Analysis also finally realized that I was a peer tutor for their course, so I had at least five tutoring appointments this week in addition to my office hours. This is certainly a good thing - I know the other tutor was feeling swamped with work, so I'm glad that some of the students have found me. Plus, it's fun for me to think about Real Analysis again.  (Just so you know, one of the first things we proved in my Real Analysis class eons ago was why 2+2=4.  You have to start WAY at the beginning... the way most professors like to teach their math classes is that you cannot use ANY fact about math until you've proven it. It's incredibly frustrating if you're still learning how to prove things, but you get a very good understanding of the nuts and bolts of it all before you have to go on to prove more complex things, so I think it's a good idea.)

But on top of that, there was normal work. I have realized that I really am a habitual person. It's not that I do the same thing every day, but I just have patterns that I like to live within, and if I do, I'm usually quite happy. But if things change, if something unexpected comes up -- well, for a day, I'm fine. That's one of the nice things. I've usually planned ahead enough that even if I could do no work for a day, the next day I wouldn't be suffering hugely. However, if TWO days go by - that's when I start freaking out. This week, I had a lot of unplanned work for Fulbright and for my tutoring appointments. That means that I still got all my work that was due this week done with lots of time to spare - however, it meant that the time that I usually have between my assignments due this week which is reserved for things due next week was now full with this extra work for Fulbright, etc.

Kurz gesagt, my weekend is very full now. I can't take the time for my usual Berkeley trip [ :( ] even though that trip is just for work purposes, though maybe I'll find a place in Oakland tomorrow that's a bit closer (one of the tricky things about Berkeley is that the fastest way to get there is the Shuttle, but that doesn't start running until 11 on weekends - then you don't get there until almost noon, etc. etc. Takes time.) because I need to get off campus.

I was thinking a lot as I trudged back to my room after my Tuesday Film class (which ends at 9:45 at night). I was thinking about how I had left my room to come down the hill to campus at about 8:30 that morning and hadn't been back to my room during the day. I had been in class, edited my statements for Fulbright twice, met with a professor to talk about my Fulbright statements, had been to the gym, had worked on my Fulbright application, had had my office hours and helped students with Abstract Algebra, had been to my other class, worked on my own Algebra homework, etc. And I was thinking about how that was the classic college life scenario - I felt empowered and excited that I was getting all these things done, that I could be considered for Fulbright -- all very exciting. And I thought I was living the college life. Then, at the bottom of the hill on top of which my dorm sits, I saw a small building where most Intermedia Arts courses are taught. And I saw fifteen students sitting around with various instruments, starting to a jam session that would clearly last a while. Drums, singing, guitar, flute - it was jazz and it was reggae and it was rock. And I stopped on the path and realized that that was not the college life I was living. There is a bluegrass festival in San Francisco this weekend. A farmer's market at Lake Merritt in Oakland. I have friends who are going to both, and I know that next week, they'll be getting very little sleep because they need to get their work done.

I want to go and live life, too. I want to do those things that are arguably much more important than my response paper for my Film Music class. With the constant evaluation of students through weekly assignments or tri-weekly homework, every time that you do something different than the norm, the professors notice. My coursework is my ultimate priority here, and that shows. After three years of college, I have a 3.97 GPA, a 4.0 in my major. But I've said "no" to these other experiences so many times, and it's getting to me a bit this year. I really hope that next semester, I can have a slightly lighter courseload and manage to get out more.

Also, every week I won't be applying to Fulbright on two weeks notice. I know that next weekend, I'll feel a bit freer. It's just that this weekend, I feel a bit like an animal that willingly walked into a cage because it thought it was the right thing to do. And now that the door's been closed, I'm regretting my decision.

Also, one reason I might be so glum this morning is that I dreamed for what felt like hours last night about going clothing shopping and not finding anything that fit! The very last dream-sequence before I woke up involved me wearing something that I don't even think David Bowie would be caught in. Tassels, sparkles, tight leather pants - oh dear. Quite entertaining!

(This post turned out rather down, or seeming like I'm quite upset - I'm not really, just so you know. I'm a bit annoyed, but in general, I'm quite good! I just wanted to let you know. :)  )

Too young to feel old!

Oh my goodness.

After another day of dashing from place to place, filling out a form here, editing an essay, tutoring a student, turning in a paper, running to the gym, going to office hours -- I'm finally back in my room and getting a chance to breathe and I put my iTunes on random. What comes on to be the soundtrack of my epic college student day? Backstreet Boys. My goodness. Nothing makes you feel quite so old as music from your childhood, I think. Old and nostalgic. Well, maybe not nostalgic. I think the Backstreet Boys already had their time.

:)

33/92 in October

That would be the temperature in Celsius/Fahrenheit today in Oakland, California. I'm sitting at my office hours and do not have all that much time, but I thought I would give a brief check-in.

My week started out quite well. The weekend involved a lot of time in Berkeley, as you saw and read about, but it also involved a large chunk of time thinking about the future on Sunday. For me, "the future" means next year - internships, jobs, possible ways for me to get back to Germany. And I found some. I found one position, an English Teaching Assistantship through Fulbright, that looked fantastic. The deadline for the actual applications isn't for another two and a half weeks - but Mills has its own preliminary interviews, and that deadline was Friday.

But you should always ask just in case. It pays off. I beat myself up for about an hour about having missed the deadline ("missed" - a day before, I didn't even know the opportunity existed) and then I wrote an email to two of the professors who are responsible for anything to do with Fulbright at Mills. One said "absolutely not, I'm sorry, but there really is no way now that the deadline has passed." The other one said, "We have one interview slot open on Friday. If you can get your Grant Request and Statement of Purpose ready by this Wednesday at 5 p.m., you can come have an interview."

Guess what I've been doing since then?

It has been so long since I've worked to a short deadline like this, given my tendency to get things done WAY ahead of time. Actually, it's been rather exhilarating. And they have both been written and I'm on the second draft, with several people reading them today so that the final draft will be up tomorrow.

Also tomorrow, I got two assignments back - my first short paper in RSS as well as my Algebra exam. Both went well, and I had a huge moment with my Algebra exam.  I looked at my grade (good, certainly, but not perfect) and realized that my mistakes were based on misunderstanding the question (in one case) and taking something for granted that I should have proven in all detail (in the other case) and --- I thought to myself, "But the grade doesn't matter, I really feel like I understand the material, and that's what's important."  I have NEVER THOUGHT SUCH A THING BEFORE. Grades have been WAY to important to me my entire academic career. Maybe this is a sign that I'm almost done. Maybe school has finally taught me that what is important isn't, in fact, what most of us are obsessed with. Grades < Understanding.  Took me a while, but I've gotten there after 15 years of school.

However, I can't ride that wave for too long. Since the student I was helping has just left, I have twenty minutes of my office hours to myself, and there's another paper to get ready for as well as a film exam a week from today. Epic treadmill of life, over here. I'll keep on running!

:)